


Machiavellianism

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [120]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, YCMAL 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25227154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: Maybe Jared’s too dumb to be Machiavellian. It’s distinctly possible.
Relationships: OMC/OMC
Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [120]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/849798
Comments: 40
Kudos: 316





	Machiavellianism

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings at the end.

It’s surprisingly easy for Jared to settle into his new Vancouver life. It helps that he’s living with Elaine, who knows the city, still insists on driving him in for practice some days even now he’s covered on Bryce’s car insurance, always saying she was heading into town anyway. Also helps that he got traded to the team right before a long home-stand, so he gets to know his teammates a bit better before he’s on the road with them. 

Gabe invites him over for lunch, as promised, Dmitry tagging along, and it’s chill. Not chill like Jared and Julius making dinner together more nights than not, watching TV, the sort of chill where hanging out almost felt like being by himself, but like, in a good way. But chill enough, despite Dmitry, who probably doesn’t know the word. Their line’s doing well, doing what it’s supposed to, and Jared scores his first goal in his second game, sends Bryce a picture of his game puck, fully expecting the ‘thats goin on the wall’ he gets in reply, followed by ‘send me a jersey too’.

Jared thinks that wall would give any Flames, Oilers, or Canucks fan a giant headache; Bryce’s Flames draft jersey, Jared’s Oilers one. Bryce had his fiftieth goal against the Canucks, Jared his tenth against the Canucks too. His first goal with the Canucks is against the Kings, the same team Bryce had his hundredth point against. It’s an ugly mish-mash of pucks and jerseys, eye-searing even, but when Bryce sends Jared a picture of the Canucks puck up in a place of honour — he demanded Jared send one-day delivery, like it was very important it get up there immediately — Jared can’t help but smile.

*

Jared’s first road trip starts off decently too. He has a two point night against the Kings — Jared _really_ enjoys playing the Kings — another point against the Sharks, though it’s a game they lose by two. They’re in Oakland when one of the Kansas City Scouts gets outed three days before the Canucks are set to play them, Jared thankfully alone in the room he shares with Luca Schmid, who went out to lunch with his linemates. He seems like a perfectly nice guy, but — really not the time to be sharing a room. 

Jared’s a mix of numb and horrified when he reads the headline, then it’s just horrified when he’s in the article itself, because of all the fucking ways to get publicly outed, Jared genuinely can’t think of one that’s worse — it’s one thing for people to find out you’re gay, it’s a whole other thing when they can _see_ that. And not even like the picture of Riley kissing a guy at a Cup party, it’s — 

Jared has now seen a lot of Joey Munroe. Like — all of him.

_did u see it_ , Bryce texts him, and Jared doesn’t have to ask what ‘it’ is.

_Yeah._ Jared texts back. _Fuck._

_i no_ , Bryce texts back, and Jared’s about to call him, but his phone starts vibrating first. It’s his mom, who either saw it — god he hopes she didn’t — or just has uncanny timing.

“You and Bryce don’t send each other nudes, do you?” his mom asks instead of saying ‘hello’.

“What!” Jared says. “ _Mom_!” 

“It’s a valid concern!” his mom says. “Just tell me you don’t and I’ll drop it!”

“No, oh my _god_ ,” Jared says.

“Okay, good!” she says. “Don’t!”

“I promise I won’t please can we stop talking about this,” Jared begs.

“Fine, I was just worried!” his mom says.

Jared bets _Elaine_ wouldn’t ask that. Thank fuck he’s living with the one non-mortifying parent.

“How was your day?” his mom asks.

“Well, no one leaked nudes of me, so better than his,” Jared says.

“You said there were no nudes!” she says.

“I meant it hypothetically mom, oh my god,” Jared says. “You’re not like, sitting at your desk right now, are you?”

_That_ would be one for the water cooler. 

“Of course not!” she says. “Give me some credit, Jared. I’m sitting in my car.”

When he finally gets off the phone after repeatedly promising his mom that he does not, and will not ever send nudes — kill him — Greg’s sent him an email with no subject, the body reading ‘Would this be something to worry about? Greg’ because everyone in his life is collectively trying to murder him with embarrassment.

Jared’s too mature to respond with ‘No, oh my _god_ ’. Well, he clearly isn’t, because that’s exactly what he said to his mother, but he responds to Greg with a simple ‘No, nothing to worry about’, then, after a moment of thought, cc’s Summers in the email so hopefully Bryce doesn’t have to deal with the mortification too.

‘Good to know. Thank you, Jared.’, Summers responds within like, a minute, which Jared has to say is a little more professional than the smiley face Greg sends him an hour later. He guesses that’s why Summers makes the big bucks.

*

Jared wasn’t actually planning on talking to Gabe about like — whatever Foster wanted him to talk to him about, because there’s no real way to sidle up to someone you’ve only known for a couple weeks and broach the subject without some heavy ‘I’m asking because this personally matters to me’ vibes. But the Munroe situation gives Jared the opportunity. Which sounds super shitty, Jared basically using someone’s fucking public outing to gauge whether a teammate’s homophobic, but, well — Jared’s never claimed to be a nice person.

He swears he can practically hear Bryce protesting from two thousand kilometres away, but suck it up Bryce, you married a Machiavellian jerk, one day you’re going to just have to admit it. Hell, the whole reason they got together was because Jared was like — trying to figure out what Bryce’s ulterior motive in talking to him was and do reverse psychology shit while the answer was a glaringly obvious in hindsight ‘he wants to date you, moron’, and the only reason Raf didn’t grab Jared’s shoulders and shout it into Jared’s face at any point during camp was because he’s too nice a person for his own good.

Maybe Jared’s too dumb to be Machiavellian. It’s distinctly possible.

“You see the thing with the Scout?” Jared asks before their game against the Golden Seals, voice carefully pitched low so Dmitry won’t overhear. 

“Yeah,” Gabe says. “That was super fucked up.”

“That he’s gay, or—” Jared says. Foster was pretty gung-ho about Gabe being the one to talk to, along with him being the You Can Play rep for the Canucks, but Foster wouldn’t be the first or the last GM not to know the personal dynamics of his team’s locker room, nor would Gabe be, Jared suspects, the first YCP rep who just ended up with the job because someone had to take it. Gabe’s an A, so maybe he felt obligated to step up.

“What? No,” Gabe says. “The situation Munroe’s in. Poor guy.”

“Yeah,” Jared says. Gabe’s frowning at him, and Jared wonders why for a moment, before realising the leading question came off homophobic as fuck. So that’s great. Like, better than Gabe agreeing that Munroe being gay was fucked up, he guesses, but still awkward. “Feel bad for him,” Jared adds, and he does. Which is a less shitty feeling than the relief that wasn’t him. Not that it would be — he didn’t lie to his mom. Nudity is saved for video chats only.

Fuck, now Jared’s going to spend the next day paranoid as fuck someone’s somehow recorded one of those long-distance sex sessions, even if that makes zero sense. So that’s great. This conversation was great.

Jared’s nervous before the game against the Scouts. It doesn’t make any sense to be, it’s not like Munroe’s going to take one look at him and somehow divine that they have something in common or anything, he just — he doesn’t know. He feels off. 

He feels even more off when he notices Gabe talking to Munroe at centre ice, both of them looking serious. Maybe they know one another, but Gabe wasn’t talking about him like he knew him personally when Jared brought it up. Gabe skates away, skates back when another Scout calls his name, and Jared watches warily. It doesn’t look like a fight, or like Gabe was giving him shit? But then, there’s no way to tell. 

Jared straightens up a little too quick when Gabe skates back into the Canuck end — Bryce would never let it go if Jared pulled his groin stretching, so he should probably be more careful — skates over to Gabe, trying to look vaguely curious rather than anxious, not sure if it works.

“What’d you tell Munroe?” Jared asks.

“That I was really sorry that happened to him,” Gabe says. “And that I don’t know what he’ll deal with from other teams, but that none of the Canucks are going to be assholes about it.”

“You can’t exactly guarantee that,” Jared says.

“I know our room,” Gabe says, then frowns at him. “I don’t need to tell you not to be an asshole about it, right?”

Oh great, Jared’s just — really hitting his accidentally appearing homophobic stride with Gabe lately. He’s definitely too dumb to call himself Machiavellian.

“I’m not going to be an asshole about it,” Jared says.

“Okay,” Gabe says, still frowning. “Good.”

“I really wouldn’t,” Jared says.

“Good,” Gabe repeats. 

Jared’s line is matched against Munroe’s all night, and it’s hard not to be distracted by that, to let it affect his play. The loss isn’t his fault — the Scouts terrifyingly talented first line is responsible for every single goal — but he still feels shitty about it after, mumbles a, “Sorry,” to Gabe, who definitely noticed Jared was off.

“No worries,” Gabe says with a dismissive hand wave, but it doesn’t make Jared feel any better, because his expression’s pinched, and Jared can’t be sure it’s about his play or about the conversation before puck drop. The last thing he needs right now is fucking up a relationship with a liney because he thinks Jared’s something he’s — kind of the polar opposite of. 

No one’s going out after that mess, and Jared isn’t in the mood to covertly text Bryce from the opposite bed as Schmid, so he goes to a Starbucks around the corner from their hotel, orders a decaf coffee and settles in an arm chair in the thankfully deserted back.

“You watch the game?” Jared asks.

“Yeah,” Bryce says. “You looked off. You hurt?”

“No, just felt weird,” Jared says. “I kept getting distracted thinking about the pictures.”

Bryce is dead silent.

“Oh my god, not like that,” Jared says. “You know what I mean.”

Bryce snorts. “Yeah,” he says.

“I don’t know how the hell he managed to stay focused out there,” Jared says, because every time Jared caught himself looking at him he seemed dialed in. Either he just managed to seem that way or the guy has unmatched compartmentalization skills. Or maybe whatever Gabe said to him made a difference, knowing the Canucks weren’t about to be pouring salt in the wound.

“Seriously,” Bryce says. 

Jared double checks that no one’s in hearing distance, lowers his voice anyway.

“Would you be cool if I came out to a teammate?” Jared asks.

“Um,” Bryce says, and Jared can hear just from the tone of his voice he’s on guard. “About us, or—”

“Just me,” Jared says. 

“I mean, you can tell whoever you want about you,” Bryce says, but in the way that means he thinks he’s supposed to say that, because obviously that’s not true. Jared’s pretty sure if he walked up to the Canucks beat reporters and outed himself Bryce would lose his mind. Jared of course has absolutely zero interest in doing that, but still.

“But would you be cool about it?” Jared asks. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to be cool, he’s the YCP rep—”

“Casterley’s the YCP rep for the Flames,” Bryce says. “And he calls the refs faggots every time we get a goal disallowed.”

“You never told me that,” Jared says.

“You’d be pissed,” Bryce says.

“Uh, yeah, for good reason,” Jared says. “Why the fuck is someone calling people faggots the YCP rep?”

“Because he offered,” Bryce says. “I don’t know. Nobody wanted it.”

“Okay, we’re—” Jared starts. “Okay, that’s fucked up. I just. I talked to him about Munroe and he kept talking about how bad he felt, and he went over and told Munroe before the game that no one was going to give him shit? So I figure he’s probably not going to be doing that.”

“I mean it, if you want to tell him, you can,” Bryce says. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re hiding or something, it’s your thing to tell.”

“It’s yours too,” Jared says. 

“I know,” Bryce says, “But I don’t want you to not tell people you want to tell about you because of me, you know? Like — I know you’re more comfortable about it, I don’t want you to be holding stuff back that you don’t want to hold back just because I wouldn’t do it in your place.”

“You know?” Bryce says again when Jared doesn’t say anything.

“Yeah,” Jared says. “I know.”

“You think he’s going to be cool?” Bryce asks.

“I think I accidentally came off as homophobic when I was trying to see if he was,” Jared says. “And now he keeps frowning like he’s judging the shit out of me. So I think he’ll probably be cool.”

Bryce is quiet.

“If you don’t want me to—”

“What’d you do?” Bryce says. He sounds a little like he’s laughing at Jared, which — fair. Very much deserved. Only Jared could fuck up a fishing expedition by appearing to be the thing he was worried Gabe was, and not once, but twice.

“Oh my god,” Bryce says when Jared tells him, and now he’s definitely laughing at Jared.

“Shut up,” Jared mutters. “I just think — he sounds like he’d be cool, right?”

“Yeah,” Bryce says. “But you know it’s one thing for some guys if it’s a total stranger and another thing if you’re sharing a locker room.”

“I know,” Jared says. “I just —”

“I get it,” Bryce says. “Good luck?”

Jared’s faintly concerned at this rate he’s going to somehow come off as homophobic when he’s _coming out_ , so he probably needs it.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Let me know how it goes,” Bryce says. “And if he’s an asshole —”

“No more fights,” Jared says.

“But—” Bryce says.

“Elaine and I hate it,” Jared says. “No more fights.”

“You can’t just team up with my mom against me,” Bryce mutters.

“We’re an awesome team, though,” Jared says. “The best team.”

Bryce seems to be torn between immediately agreeing that his two favourite people are the best and grumbling about them teaming up on him. Jared can practically _hear_ the dilemma.

“I like your face,” Jared says. “Quit getting into fights.”

“I like _your_ face,” Bryce says, which as comebacks go kind of sucks, especially since it isn’t Jared’s face that keeps getting messed up. The problem isn’t just that Bryce has a temper, can get drawn into fights, take stupid penalty minutes, when the Flames need him out there, but it’s also that he isn’t particularly _good_ at it. Jared knows better than to say that, though: Bryce would just get into more fights to trying prove him wrong.

“I promise not to get into any fights that’ll mess that face up, then,” Jared says, which is a pretty easy promise to make. “Now you.”

Bryce mumbles something Jared suspects is not a promise not to get into any fights that mess up his pretty face. Which is fine. Jared will have Elaine keep working on him. They truly are an awesome team.

“If he’s a jerk I’m going to fight him,” Bryce says, which confirms that whatever he muttered was not, in fact, a promise not to fight.

“He’s not going to be,” Jared says.

“But if he is,” Bryce says.

“He won’t be,” Jared says, and hopes like hell he’s right.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: two instances of a homophobic slur.


End file.
